After a two-year investigation, a truncated trial conducted partly without the defendant and several hours of deliberations, a House ethics subcommittee found Rep. Charles Rangel guilty of 11 ethics violations. The findings will be sent to the full committee, who will make a recommendation to the House regarding Rangel’s …

So Mitch McConnell has folded, handing Jim DeMint and company a victory in their Tea Party-backed crusade to eliminate the scourge of earmarks, which they call a perfect symbol of institutionalized Washington corruption. The House GOP has done the same, and even the Obama White House–seeing an obvious winning issue–is hopping the …

Last Thursday, Veterans Day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona to try and convince him to support the New Start treaty, which the administration is trying to get ratified in the Senate by the end of the year, administration officials familiar with the discussion tell Time. The treaty, a cornerstone of …

The president, in need of some positive news, seems to be in a horse-trading mood:

Exhibit A:

Washington (CNN) — In a bid to ratify the new nuclear missile agreement with Russia during the lame-duck session of Congress, the Obama administration is offering to spend $4 billion more over five years for nuclear weapons

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From former Obama budget director Peter Orszag:

Social Security is not the key fiscal problem facing the nation. Payments to its beneficiaries amount to 5 percent of the economy now; by 2050, they’re projected to rise to about 6 percent. Over the same period, federal health care costs will increase six times as much.

Orszag goes …

Some of the TIME crew traveled down to the Capitol this morning for a Tea Party rally headlined by Sen. Jim DeMint. He and other speakers extended promises to continue “the fight” — the fight to repeal “Obamacare,” the fight against the “liberal agenda,” the fight against earmarks, and plenty more where that came from. Here are some …

So says Salon:

Gingrich has now been repeating the exact same formulation about his plans for about a year and a half. And every time he does it, the media reports it as if it’s new. That’s despite the fact that, by our non-comprehensive count, Gingrich has repeated in 20 separate interviews that he will make his decision in February

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The Afghan president calls for a smaller American troop presence and reduced military operations in his country. And Michael Cohen, a sharp liberal critic of the war, is extremely frustrated:

It’s hard to imagine a greater indictment of US strategy than to have the president of Afghanistan basically argue that that strategy is

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